Chapter Fourteen.
“Who’s the letter from, Pierce?”
“One of the medical brokers, as they call themselves—the man I wrote to;” and the young doctor tossed the missive contemptuously across the breakfast table to his sister, who caught it up eagerly and read it through.
“Of course,” she cried, with her downy little rounded cheeks flushing, and a bright mocking look in her eyes; “and I quite agree with him. He says you are too modest and diffident about your practice; that the very fact of its being established so many years makes it of value; that no one would take it on the terms you propose, and that you must ask at least five hundred pounds, which would be its value plus a valuation of the furniture. How much did you ask?”
“Nothing at all.”
“What!” cried Jenny, dropping her bread and butter.
“I said I was willing to transfer the place to any enterprising young practitioner who would take the house off my hands, and the furniture.”
“Oh, you goose—I mean gander!”
“Thank you, Sissy.”
“Well, so you are—a dear, darling, stupid old brother,” cried the girl, leaping up to go behind the young doctors chair, covered his eyes with her hands, and place her little soft white double chin on the top of his head. “There you are! Blind as a bat! Five hundred pounds! Pooh! Rubbish! Stuff! Why, it’s worth thousands and thousands, and, what is more, happiness to my own old Pierce.”
“I thought that subject was tabooed, Sissy.”
“I don’t care; I have broken the taboo. I have risen in rebellion, and I’ll fight till I die for my principles.”
“Brave little baby,” he said mockingly, as he took the little hands from his eyes and prisoned them.
“Yes,” she said, meaningly, “braver than you know.”
“Jenny! You have not dared to speak about such a thing?” he cried, turning upon her angrily.
“Not such a little silly,” she replied. “What! make her draw in her horns and retire into her shell, and begin thinking my own dear boy is a miserable money-hunter? Not I, indeed. For shame, sir, to think such a thing of me! I never even told her what a dear good fellow you are, worrying yourself to death to keep me, and bringing me to live in the country, because you thought I was pining and growing pale in nasty old Westminster and its slums.”
“That’s right,” said Pierce, with a faint sigh.
“Let her find out naturally what you are; and she is finding it out, for don’t you make any mistake about it, Miss Katherine Wilton is young, but she has plenty of shrewd common sense, as I soon found out, and little as I have seen of her I soon saw that she was quite awake to her position. Girls of sense who have fortunes soon smell out people’s motives; and if they think they are going to marry her right off to that out-door sport, Claud, they have made a grand mistake.”
“But you have not dared to talk about your foolish ideas to her, Jenny?”
“Not a word. Oh, timid, modest frere! I put on my best frock and my best manners when we went there to dinner, and I was as nice and ladylike as a girl could be. Reward:—Kate took to me at once, and we became friends.”
Leigh uttered a sigh of relief.
“But if I had dared I could have told her what a coward you are, and how ashamed I am of you.”
“For not playing the part of a contemptible schemer, Sis?”
“Who wants you to, sir? Why, money has nothing to do with it. Now, answer me this, Pierce. If she were only Miss Wilton without a penny, wouldn’t you propose for her at once?”
“No, Sis; I would not.”
“You wouldn’t?”
“No, I wouldn’t be so contemptible as to take such a step when I am little better than a pauper.”
“Boo! What nonsense. You a pauper! An educated gentleman, acknowledged to be talented in his profession. But I know you’d marry her to-morrow and turn your poor little sister out of doors if you had an income. Bother incomes and money! It’s all horrid, and causes all the misery there is in the world. Pierce, you shan’t run away from here and leave the poor girl to be married to that wretched boy.”
“Jenny, dear, be serious. I really must get away from here as soon as I can.”
“Oh, Pierce! Don’t talk about it, dear. It is only to make yourself miserable through these silly ideas of honour; and it is to make me wretched, too, just when I am so well and so happy, and all that nasty London cough gone. I declare if you take me away I’ll pine away and die.”
“No, you shan’t, Sissy. You can’t, with your own clever special physician at your side,” he said merrily.
“Not if you could help it, I know. But Pierce, darling, don’t be such a coward. It’s cruel to her to run away, and leave her unprotected.”
“Hold your tongue!” said Leigh peremptorily. “I tell you that is all imagination on your part.”
“And I tell you it is a fact I’ve seen and heard quite enough. Old Wilton is very poor, and he wants to get the money safe in his family. Mrs Wilton is only the old puss whose paws he is using for tongs. As for Claud—Ugh! I could really enjoy existence if I might box his big ears. Now look here, big boy,” cried Jenny, impulsively snatching up the agent’s letter: “I am going to burn this, for you shan’t go away and make a medical martyr of yourself, just because the dearest girl in the world—who likes you already for your straightforward manly conduct towards her—happens to have a fortune, and your practice beginning to improve, too.”
“My practice beginning to improve!” he cried, contemptuously.
“Yes, sir, improve; didn’t you have a broken boy to mend yesterday? and haven’t you a chance of the parish practice, which is twenty pounds a year? and oh, hooray, hooray! I am so glad, there’s somebody ill at the Manor again. I hope it’s Clodpole Claud this time,” and she wildly waltzed round the room, waving the letter over her head, before stopping by the fire, throwing the paper in, and plumping down in a chair, looking demure and solemn as a nun.
For Tom Jonson, the groom from the Manor, had driven over in the dog-cart, pulled up short, and now rang sharply at the bell.
Leigh turned pale, for the man’s manner betokened emergency, and he could only associate this with the patient to whom he had been called before.
“Will you come over at once, sir, please?”
“Miss Wilton worse?”
“Oh, no, sir. Something wrong with young Master.” Leigh uttered a sigh of relief, and stepped back for his hat.
“Mr Wilton, junior, taken ill, dear,” he said. “I heard, Pierce. Do kill him, or send him into a consumption.”